“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Founding Conference of the Fourth International-1938

 

 
Markin comment (repost from September 2010 slightly edited):

Several years ago, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call issued during the presidency of the late Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must have been something in the air at the time (maybe caused by these global climatic changes that are hazarding our collective future) because I had  also seen a spade of then recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looked very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course in the 21^st century, after over one hundred and fifty years of attempts to create adequate international working-class organizations, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) was appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward. 
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Founding Conference of the

Fourth International

1938

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The War In the Far East and The Revolutionary Perspectives

I

The conflict in the Far East between China and Japan lays bare some of the principal symptoms of the crisis of world capitalism its final, most highly developed, imperialist stage, and opens up perspectives of great revolutionary development in a decisive part of the globe. On the one hand, Japan, weakest link in the chain of world imperialism, is seeking to overcome the maladies of its decline by a war of colonial conquest. On the other hand by their invasion of China, the Japanese imperialists have provoked a defensive campaign which, despite its weakness and inadequacy under the leadership of the Kuomintang, assumes the character of a war of national liberation. At the same time, by the pursuit of their predatory aims in China, the Japanese imperialists have accentuated the inter-imperialist antagonisms which are forcing mankind to the brink of a new world war.

II

Japan, belatedly rising to the stature of an imperialist power toward the end of the nineteenth century, was confronted by a world already substantially divided among its imperialist rivals. The Japanese imperialists, moreover, were obliged to proceed from an exceedingly weak economic base in their plans of empire. Lacking such vital raw materials as coal and iron, copper, oil and cotton, they were driven from the outset to seek these supplies beyond the natural frontiers of Japan. Acquisition of sources of these raw materials was a condition, not only of expansion, but even of survival in the competitive world of imperialist rivalry. The career of Japanese imperialism opened with the Sino Japanese War of 1894-5, when Japan defeated China and seized Korea and Formosa. Ten years later, Japan vanquished Czarist Russia and took over the sphere of influence held by the latter in South Manchuria. During the world war of 1914-18, Japan seized the Chinese province of Shantung and presented China with the notorious “Twenty one Demands”, which were designed to bring all China under Japanese Control.

III

The destruction caused in Europe by the World War, creating an ever increasing demand for products of all kinds, gave a mighty impetus to the development of Japanese industry. The growth of Japan’s productive forces during that period, however, intensified all the contradictions of Japanese economy. As the Versailles “peace” conference, Japan, as a junior partner of the Allied Powers, received only a paltry share of the booty of war. After ceding to Japan a few Pacific islands formerly held by Germany, the Allied imperialists, at the Washington Conference in 1922, forced Japan to evacuate Shantung. They also compelled Japan to withdraw her troops from the Maritime provinces of Siberia, where they had formed part of the inter Allied interventionist forces employed against the first workers’ state which had emerged from the October Revolution in Russia. These developments coincided with the erection of tariffs and quota barriers—measures of extreme protection designed to overcome the post war economic crisis in the countries of the West—which dealt Japan double blows on the economic front. Protectionism not only curtained Japan’s trade, but also threatened her supply of raw materials, for Japan depended on the proceeds of her export trade to finance raw material purchases abroad. The blows at Japan’s export trade consequently led to a drainage of the country’s gold reserves. A sharp currency crisis reflected the entire insecurity of the Japanese economic structure, which was damaged still further by the disastrous earthquake in 1933. Japanese capitalism was doomed to suffocate within its own national boundaries unless it could find a way out by means of colonial conquests.

IV

The growth of Japan’s productive forces and the development of capitalist economic relations did not result, as in the capitalist countries of the West, in the emergence of a corresponding social and political superstructure. The transition from feudal to capitalist society was accomplished without revolution and the bourgeosie was therefore not faced with the necessity of razing the old institutions of social rule and replacing them by new. Emerging from the ranks of the feudal nobility and the warrior caste of Samurai, the bourgeosie adapted the old institutions, with some modifications, to the requirements of the new systems of capitalist exploitation. Thus ancient feudal institutions, including a “divine” monarchy, a semi-independent military caste, and semi feudal types of exploitation exist side by side with a “democratic” parliament and powerful industrial and financial trusts. From the presence of these “feudal survivals,” powerful as they appear to be, it would, however, he false to deduce that the next stage in the social progress of Japan must he a “democratic” revolution. This is the shallow opportunist reasoning of the Stalinists. Bourgeois property relations and the capitalist system of exploitation, extending over both the proletariat and the peasantry, decree the revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only reed of salvation for both workers and peasants. If in the high tide of the Japanese revolution, the revolutionary party of the masses should seek to discover an intermediate, “democratic” solution for the great social tasks, the inevitable result will be the disorientation and destruction of the revolutionary forces and the restoration of power to the bankrupt ruling class.

V

The feudal military caste of generals and officers, superficially united by the monarchy, is not a homogeneous body. While the lower ranks of officers are drawn largely from rural areas, from the upper layers of the peasantry, the tops fuse with the industrial and financial bourgeosie. As a whole, the military caste strives to maintain for itself the traditional privileges and semi-independent position which it occupied in the feudal era. For this purpose it is organized in such typically feudal institutions as the secret Black Dragon society. The strivings of the military caste to keel intact its privileges and powers tend to complicate the main problem of the Japanese ruling class as a whole, which is to maintain over both the proletariat and the peasantry the present crushing system of exploitation with all the oppression which accompanies it. Periodically, this caste comes into conflict with industry and finance capital, which seek to stem the drain on economy caused by the parasitic needs of the military caste. Army revolts and the assassination of leading political representatives of the industrial and financial bourgeosie are the sharpest expressions of this conflict. These revolts also express, insofar as they are led by the younger officers of lower rank, the rebellion of the peasantry against finance capital. But since all sections of the ruling class realize the perils of class disunity, conflicts are finally settled on the basis of mutual concessions, by loading additional burdens onto the backs of the Japanese masses and by common agreement to embark on predatory military campaigns to enslave neighboring peoples, thereby cementing the cracks in the structure of ruling class domination as a whole.

VI

China, geographically close to Japan, with a population of some 430,000,000 people spread over a vast expanse of territory rich in minerals and other basic raw materials, was the logical scene for Japanese imperialist expansion. In China, the Japanese imperialists saw the prospect of a “fundamental solution” of their most pressing economic difficulties. Contemplation of this prospect, moreover, opened up visions of imperial power and grandeur. China came to he viewed not only as the answer to economic problems, but as a jumping off point for campaigns which would plant the banner of the Rising Sun in Siberia, at least as far as Lake Baikal, in India, and Malaysia, in Indonesia, in Hawaii and the Philippines, in the Antipodes, to say nothing of Latin America and the western portion of the United States. That the Japanese imperialists did not earlier seek to bring all China under their control by means of war was due largely to fear of their powerful rivals in the West whose interests in China they, would inevitably have to assail. The Chinese revolution of 1925-27 dictated to Japan a policy of watchful waiting, especially since the anti-imperialist wave in China during that period was being directed exclusively against Britain. The world economic crisis which, following the post war reconstruction period, afflicted the capitalist world, gave Japan both her opportunity and an added spur to action. Taking advantage of the preoccupation of the Western powers with their own acute domestic problems, the Japanese imperialists seized Manchuria in 1931 and in the following year established there their Manchukuo “protectorate.” In 1933, they seized the province of Jehol, annexed it to Manchukuo, and then proceeded to establish a foothold in North China. The military frightfulness with which Japan is now scourging China represents a further stage in the Japanese plans of colonial conquest.

VII

As a “backward’ country, China has been the victim of imperialist rapacity for more than a century. Imperialist guns, in the early nineteenth century, ended China’s age old seclusion and isolation and introduced modern industry and capitalist forms of exploitation into the country. The imperialists came to China first as traders. But with the rapid advance of industry in the West, and the growing accumulation of surplus value as a result of ever more intense labor exploitation, it was only a matter of time before China came to be regarded not only as a commodity market, but as a lucrative field for the investment of capital as well. China’s inexhaustible supply of cheap labor proved a magnetic attraction for foreign capital. In a series of wars against which the decadent Manchu Dynasty proved completely impotent, the imperialist powers grabbed Chinese territory, established “concessions” in China’s principal cities, and wrested from China a series of “privileges” designed to protect their trade and investments. By limiting Chinese import duties to five per cent ad la/Gram, they assured the competitive position of their products in the China market. By controlling the collection and disbursement of Chinese Customs revenues, they insured the payment of China’s rapidly mounting foreign debts. By establishing the principle of “extraterritoriality” (capitulations) , they gained exemption of their business enterprise from Chinese taxation and their nationals from the operation of Chinese law. The unequal treaties in which these “privileges” were embodied were the signs of China’s reduction to the status of a semi-colonial country.

VIII

Imperialist economic penetration shook ChinaÕs semi-feudal economy, based on agriculture and handicrafts, to its very foundations. Cheap commodities, manufactured in foreign owned plants both in China and the countries of the West, penetrated the country along railroads built by the imperialists. The most important section of the old ruling class, especially the Manchu officialdom, were converted into brokers for foreign capital (compradores). The special “privileges“ which the imperialists exacted from China militated against the all sided development of an independent Chinese capitalist economy and kept the country’s productive forces in a political straight jacket. During the World War, however, Chinese industry, like the industry of Japan, received a great stimulus. The preoccupation of the major imperialist powers in the Western hemisphere, although giving rain to Japan’s colonial ambitions in China, nevertheless relieved the total imperialist pressure on the country. Native industry advanced rapidly.

IX

It was during this period that the so called “national” bourgeoisie, seeking to establish its own economic base in competition with the imperialists, began to emerge. The Chinese proletariat, drawn from the pauperized population of the villages, gained vastly in numerical strength, and as the result of groupment in large factories and enterprises, in class consciousness and fighting spirit. When British imperialism, having overcome the post war crisis, began to reassert itself in China, it was obliged to direct its guns against striking Chinese workers. Bloody massacres by British imperialist troops and police in 1925-26, in which workers and their student allies were the principal victims, stirred an anti-imperialist wave which threatened to engulf the whole structure of imperialist domination in China. The Chinese national bourgeoisie, irritated by the humiliations visited on them by the imperialists and seeing a chance to strike blows at their principal foreign trade competitors, supported the anti-imperialist movement by means of judicious financial aid to workers on strike in imperialist enterprises. But when the strike movement spread or threatened to spread to native plants, and when, moreover, it deepened into social revolution, the national exploiters bared their class fangs and solidarized themselves with the imperialists against the workers.

X

Historic belatedness and the subjection of China by the imperialists deprived the Chinese bourgeoisie of that progressive role which had been played by its European forerunners in the bourgeois revolutions of the West. It could neither establish independent class roots in Chinese society nor assert itself as a sovereign master class. The compradores, direct agents of the imperialists recruited from among the landlords and merchants and the old Manchu officialdom, were the first representatives of Chinese capitalism. From the ranks of the compradores emerged the “national” bourgeoisie. A thousand threads of interpenetration, interdependence and mutual interest linked the national bourgeoisie to the compradores. Together they participated in the exploitation, not only of the proletariat, but also of the peasantry, since their interests were closely interlocked with those of the village exploiters, to whom they were connected by the countrywide banking system. In this complex of relationships lies the explanation for the utter inability of the Chinese bourgeoisie to conduct a consistent struggle against imperialism, to erect a modern unified state, or to solve the agrarian problem.

XI

The petty bourgeoisie occupies an intermediate position between the big bourgeoisie and the proletariat. An overwhelming majority of the class consists of small peasant proprietors and tenant farmers. In the cities, in addition, is the numerous army of small shopkeepers, handicraft manufacturers, professionals such as teachers, doctors and lawyers, and petty government officials, all of whom are subjected to the oppression of the big bourgeoisie and the imperialists. The peasantry, by reason of its intermediate and dependent social position, its dispersal over vast spaces, its stratified diversification, its individualistic and proprietary characteristics, its cultural backwardness, is unable, despite its numerical preponderance, to play any leading independent political role in Chinese society. It cannot solve even its most pressing problems by regaining possession of the land and relieving itself of the burdens of landlord usurer parasitism. Much less is it capable of reorganizing the entire agricultural economy on a new and higher level by establishing large scale collectivized farming. The degeneration and disappearance of the so called Chinese Soviet Republic, the explicit abandonment of the agrarian revolution by the Stalinist leaders of the peasantry, who have led the remnants of a grandiose agrarian movement back into the fold of the bourgeoisie landlord Kuomintang, is a fresh historic demonstration of the political feebleness of the peasantry. As a class, the peasantry can be led, but they cannot lead. In all their movements they come under the leadership either of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. The petty bourgeoisie of the cities is similarly weak and dependent and can play no leading political role. The collapse of the great student movements directed in recent years against the Kuomintang and imperialism was a direct result of the fact that these movements found no firm base in an active proletariat.

XII

Because of the reactionary, weak and dependent character of the bourgeoisie, and the political feebleness of the petty bourgeoisie, the national or democratic tasks (independence from imperialism, creation of a unified state, the agrarian revolution) became the tasks of the proletariat, a class which, alone of all the classes in society, has independent and progressive class goals and is devoid of any ties of mutual interest either with the imperialists or the native exploiters—a class which, moreover, despite its numerical inferiority, possesses a concentrated power to raise it to the summits of society. Placed upon the shoulders of the proletariat were the twin tasks of achieving solution of the national problems and of clearing a road for the socialist reconstruction of society by raising itself to the position of ruling class in alliance with all the exploited masses of the towns and villages. In 1925-27, when the wave of the revolution was rising, revolutionary policy demanded the orientation of the Chinese proletariat in accordance with this perspective. What the proletariat lacked in numerical strength had been supplied by the peasants and the city poor, who represent a mighty reservoir of revolutionary power. Progressive leadership of the peasantry was guaranteed by the proletariat. Together, these classes represented an invincible force against which all the weapons of imperialism and bourgeois-landlord reaction would have proved unavailing—provided this force had been given a clear revolutionary direction.

XIV

But the Stalin-Bukharin leadership of the Communist international, turning their backs on all previous revolutionary experience including the still fresh experience of Russia, resorted in China to the Menshevik policies which they had been prevented from carrying out in Russia in 1917, Counterposing the national tasks of the Chinese revolution to the emancipator struggle of the workers and peasants, arbitrarily separating the two in accordance with a lifeless theory of “stages’, they declared the immediate tasks in China to be national unification and the expulsion of the imperialists. In line, moreover, with the narrow nationalist conceptions which were already dominating Soviet policy, the Stalinist bureaucracy viewed the Chinese bourgeoisie as a possible ally against Great Britain, then the leader of the anti-Soviet Capitalist front. Stalin-Bukharin therefore assigned to the Chinese bourgeoisie the leading role in the national struggle. They subordinated the Communist Party to the Kuomintang and the proletariat and peasantry to the bourgeoisie. The political formula for this subordination was the “bloc of four classes”, wherein the proletariat and the peasantry were supposed to be united with the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie for the “common” struggle against imperialism. The Chinese Communists were ordered by Stalin-Bukharin to hold the strike movement and the activities of the peasants within limits acceptable to the bourgeoisie, in order not to disturb the “national united front,” This opportunist betrayal of the revolution was passed off as Bolshevism on the youthful and inexperienced Chinese proletariat and the still more youthful and inexperienced Chinese Communist Party. At the height of the revolutionary wave, the bourgeoisie, under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership, made its peace with imperialism at the price of a few paltry concessions to its “national” sentiments and turned savagely on the unsuspecting workers and peasants who had been taught by the Communists to look upon the bourgeoisie as their leaders and saviors. The bourgeoisie sealed its alliance with imperialism in the blood of he insurgent masses.

XIV

On the ruins of the Chinese revolution of 1925-27 arose the counter revolutionary Kuomintang regime. The workers returned to a slavery intensified by the new military dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek, who intensified a reign of terror and wiped out all the workers’ organizations. Militarist wars, evidence of the complete disunity of the country, revived on an unprecedented scale as Chiang Kai-shek sought to extend his sway over all of China. The peasantry, scourged by landlordism, usury and military requisitioning, fell into deeper ruin. Imperialism, against which the “bloc of four classes” had been specifically directed, was able to strengthen all its commanding positions. The road was prepared for the subsequent invasion by Japan, with its obvious threat to the Soviet Union. These were the real fruits of the Stalin-Bukharin police’s in China.

XV

The Kuomintang government which arose from the events of 1925-27 represented the triumph of the bourgeois counterrevolution over the popular movement of the masses. Chiang Kai shek, head of the Kuomintang’s military forces, clamped down an iron dictatorship. While stamping out the remaining embers of the revolution, lie at the same time “expropriated the bourgeoisie politically in order to save them economically.” The petty bourgeois masses who constituted the driving force of the Kuomintang against the regional military satraps in the high tide of the revolution, fell into political passivity with the exception of some of the peasantry, who, goaded by intensified exploitation, took to the path of open civil war against the old and new oppressors. Thus the Kuomintang became a full fledged party of the bourgeosie. The new rulers justified their vicious suppression of the masses by appealing to the petty bourgeois doctrines of Sun Yat-sen, the program of the Kuomintang—especially the so called “principle of democracy” with its prescription of a period of “political tutelage” for the masses. The military dictatorship, carried forward under the single rule of the Kuomintang, with all other political tendencies driven underground, was represented as a preparation of the masses for “democratic” government. But democracy is no nearer realization today than it was eleven years ago. This fact constitutes the living proof that between the military dictatorship of the Kuomintang and the realization of the dictatorship of the proletariat, there cannot be any intermediate, transitional, “democratic” stage. Those who, like the Stalinists, contend that such a stage is possible—even inevitable!—deceive and disorient the masses and thereby prepare the betrayal and defeat of the Chinese revolution.

XVI

From the fatal opportunist policies which they pursued in 1925-27 during the upsurge of the revolutionary wave, the Chinese Communists veered to the opposite extreme of adventurism in the period of the Kuomintang counter-revolution. After precipitating disastrous and utterly futile uprisings which culminated in the tragic Canton putsch, and thereby cutting themselves away from their working class base, they transferred their activities to the rural interior. Deserting the prostrate proletariat in the cities, they placed themselves at the head of peasant armies which emerged as spearheads of the agrarian revolts during the ebb of the revolutionary tide, setting as their goal the establishment of a “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry”—precisely that intermediate “democratic” stage which for China and all other colonial and semi-colonial countries is historically excluded. Although proceeding under the slogan of Soviets, which the Communists had rejected during the high tide of the revolution, but which were later to be sanctified in “Third Period” policies, the peasant war did not succeed in evoking responses among the workers. Held down by Chiang Kai-shek’s military dictatorship and a devastating economic crisis, disorganized further by the “Red Trade Union” tactics of the Communists, held in passivity by the refusal of the Communists to unfold a program of democratic demands corresponding to their vital needs in the new counter revolutionary stage, the workers drifted away from political life. Chiang Kai-shek, unhindered by the proletariat, was finally able, at the end of 1934, to crush the isolated peasant Soviets despite the many heroic battles fought by the peasant Red armies.

XVII

The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 found the Kuomintang government waging a war of extermination against the revolting peasants and at the same time strengthening its reactionary dictatorship over the workers. Announcing a policy of “non resistance“ to Japanese imperialism Chiang Kai-shek proclaimed as his supreme tasks the wiping out of the insurgent peasant movement and the unification of the country—meaning thereby the establishment of Chiang’s own power over that of his provincial adversaries. The reverse side of the coin of non-resistance was a vigorous stamping out of the rising anti-Japanese movement. Revealing anew the fundamental unity of interests between imperialists and the national bourgeoisie, the non- resistance policy of the Kuomintang facilitates Japan’s invasion of China. The imperialists, on their part, were more than generous in aiding the Kuomintang to crush the peasants and keep the labor movement in a state of prostration.

XVIII

While holding down the oppressed masses and retreating step after step before the Japanese invaders, the Kuomintang drew closer to British and American imperialism in the hope that these powers, fearful for their own interests in China, would be obliged to halt Japan’s onward march. There also existed the hope that China would regain at least a breathing space through Japan becoming embroiled with the U.S.S.R. But the devastating world economic crisis which coincided with Japan’s colonial drive together with their own military unpreparedness, compelled Britain and America to adopt a policy of watchful waiting in the Far East while encouraging the Kuomintang to resist Japan as far as it dared. The Stalinist bureaucracy, temporarily wedded to the policy of status quo, was prepared to make numerous concessions to Japan in order to insure the uninterrupted building of “socialism” with in the borders of the U.S.S.R. When aggravated internal difficulties and the immobilization of its principal rivals spurred Japan to military campaigns of increasing scope in 1937—to the seizure of North China and the attack on the Yangtze valley—the Kuomintang was faced with the alternative of either abdicating before Japan or resisting with the help of such material aid as it could secure abroad. Unlike the earlier Japanese drives, the newest campaign threatened the Kuomintang regime in its own strongholds and the bourgeoisie in the very center of its pelf and power, thus making it clear that the limits of the non-resistance policy had been reached. The Kuomintang decided upon a purely military defensive campaign against Japan, which is far different from consistent, principled struggle against imperialism as a whole for China’s national independence. Other factors entered into the Kuomintang’s decision to resist. Bolstered by British and American financial aid and a rising economic conjuncture, encouraged, too, by its victory over the Chinese Soviets, the regime has grown firmer and more self-confident. Moreover, the policy of non resistance, coupled with the growth of anti-Japanese sentiment throughout the country, was being exploited against Chiang Kai-shek with increasing success by his provincial rivals.

XIX

The newest phase of Japan’s colonial drive has coincided with the final degeneration of the Communist International. From instruments of the revolutionary class struggle, the Communist parties have been converted into instruments of Stalinist diplomacy. Searching for “allies” among the democratic capitalist powers in face of the growing war threat, the Stalinist bureaucracy ordered these parties to abandon their revolutionary program and support the bourgeoisie of their respective countries. Just as Stalin needed the bourgeois democracies of the west as “allies” against Hitler’s Germany, so in the Far East, in line with his Anglo-French American orientation, he sought once more an alliance with the bourgeois Kuomintang—this time against imperialist Japan. What remained of the Chinese Communist party after Chiang Kai-shek’s forceful liquidation of the peasant Soviets, has publicly surrendered the last remnants of its revolutionary policy in order to enter a “People’s Anti-Japanese Front” with the hangman of the Chinese revolution. The Chinese Stalinists have formally liquidated “Soviet China,” handed over to Chiang Kai-shek the remnants of the peasant Red armies, openly renounced the agrarian struggle, explicitly abandoned the class interests of the workers. Publicly embracing the petty bourgeois doctrines of Sun Yat-sen, they have proclaimed themselves the gendarmes private property and, in conformity with Stalinist practice everywhere, the enemies of the revolution.

XX

It is the bounden duty of the international proletariat and above all of the revolutionary vanguard, to support the struggle of China against Japan. The crime of the Stalinists consists, not in supporting and participating in China’s struggle, even while it remains under the leadership of the Kuomintang—but in surrendering their class struggle policy, in abandoning the interests of the exploited masses, in capitulating politically to the Kuomintang, in abdicating the right of independent mobilization of the masses against Japanese invaders, in renouncing revolutionary criticism of the Kuomintang’s conduct of the war, in fortifying Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership, in supporting and spreading the illusion that the Kuomintang and the national bourgeoisie can lead the war consistently and to a successful conclusion. By these traitorous actions they mislead, confuse and disorient the masses of China and obstruct a revolutionary mobilization. The Stalinists in other countries, impotent to arouse the workers to solidarity with China’s cause, “make empty appeals to the 11 democratic, peaceful” imperialist governments to save China from Japan. They base these appeals, not on any revolutionary grounds (there are none), but on the imperialists’ own need to preserve their robber interests in China and the Far East. They urge the workers to support their “own” imperialist governments in “collective security” action against Japan—in reality the action of one set of imperialist robbers against another. Thus the Stalinists, following in the footsteps of the politically bankrupt Second International, stand forth as the social patriotic betrayers of the working class and the oppressed generally—not only in the “democratic” countries of the vest, but in the East as well,

XXI

British imperialism, with vast trade interests and a two-billion dollar investment stake in China, is becoming more and more perturbed by Japan’s advance. The threat to its China interests, however, is but one aspect of British imperialism’s fear for its empire in the coming war for redivision of the world, of which Japan’s attack on China, following Italy’s seizure of Ethiopia and Italo-German intervention in Spain, is but a beginning. Britain strives desperately to build up a war machine that will he adequate to defend her scattered possessions, while pursuing a temporary strategy calculated to delay the inevitable denouncement. Unable at present to challenge Japan at arms, particularly in view of her Mediterranean difficulties, Britain seeks to hinder Japan by placing all possible obstacles in that country’s path in particular by extending material aid to the Kuomintang regime and by parallel diplomatic action with the United States calculated to frighten the Japanese imperialists with the specter of an Anglo-American bloc. Britain hopes Japan will become exhausted in long drawn out war with China. She also banks on the possibility that Japan may become embroiled in war with the U.S.S.R., thus staving off the Japanese threat to British possessions and interests in the Far East. A similar hope animates the British imperialists with regard to the Italo-German-Japanese bloc as a whole which is now the foremost challenger of Britain’s world interests. Meanwhile, fearing that revolts of its millions of colonial slaves will create a dangerous rear in the coming war, British imperialist bribes the national bourgeoisie of its colonies (India Constitution, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty) in order to secure their allegiance. The “dominions” of Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, due to the development of their own economy, have acquired interests separate from and contradictory to the interests of the British Empire as a whole. These interests represent a centrifugal force within the Empire. Australia and New Zealand in particular, because of their nearness to the Far Eastern cauldron, want freedom to remain outside of Empire struggles with Japan if it should prove advantageous to do so. Canada is in a like position with regard to the United States. Britain seeks to check those factors disintegrating the Empire by such means as trade preferences (Ottawa agreements) and periodical Imperial Conferences, which are designed to strengthen the ties between the dominions, on the one hand, and the metropolis on the other. In the present struggle in the Far East, British imperialism is concerned with the fate of China only insofar as the fate of China affects the interests of British imperialism.

XXII

American imperialism, although having fewer and smaller actual interests in China than Great Britain has, is alarmed at the prospect of Japanese domination of the Pacific. Repeated breakdowns in American Economy, occurring at shorter intervals, serve warning that if American capitalism is to survive and expand, it must soon play a more commanding role, not only in the Pacific area, but on the entire world arena. Roosevelt’s speech at Chicago in October, 1937, directed against “aggressor powers”, furnished the key to the future politics of American imperialism. Unable now to challenge Japan, the Washington government tacks along devious diplomatic courses such as the Brussels Conference. Such ostensibly disinterested enterprises are useful for sowing pacifist illusions and thereby preparing the American workers to fight for the interests of American imperialism in the coming wars. At the same time, while according a sham independence to the Philippines in order to enlist the Filipino bourgeoisie to its side, the Washington government builds up a mighty army, navy and air force, and consolidates its empire in the Americas by means of the Pan American Union, preparatory to challenging all its rivals for world supremacy. While regarding war with Japan as inevitable, the American imperialists hope to be able to enter upon such a war as late as possible, believing that Britain will be forced into war with Japan and that both will emerge exhausted from the struggle. For some time, too, the American imperialists have banked on the prospect of a Soviet-Japanese war will destroy their Pacific rival, but the internal crisis raging in the Soviet Union, testifying to the entire instability of the Stalin regime, causes this prospect to recede more and more into the background. In their efforts to veil their war plans, the American imperialists are given the unstinting aid of the Stalinists, who, paralleling the betrayal by their China confreres, proclaim the “peaceful” role of American imperialism, call upon the Washington government to save China from Japan, and offer their services as war recruiting sergeants.

XXIII

France, with a large empire of colonial slaves, is interested in the maintenance of the status-quo in Europe, Africa and the Far East. French interests in China, though smallest and less diffused, are analogous to those of Great Britain. Being concentrated mainly in the colony of French Indo-China, they do not come within the orbit of immediate Japanese ambitions. Hence France’s policy of diplomatic conciliation toward Japan, coupled with surreptitious material aid to China, following in all cases the leadership of Great Britain. This policy, however, finds its counterpart in the most cruel exploitation and oppression of the masses of Indo China (as in all the other colonies of French imperialism) and a campaign of violent persecution of the revolutionists in that territory. As partners in, or supporters of, French imperialist government of the now defunct Popular Front, the Stalinists and “Socialists“ of the Second International bear a full share of the responsibility for all the bestial crimes of French imperialism in Indo-China.

XXIV

The European fascist states, in contrast to Great Britain, the U.S.A. and France, have a very small economic stake in China. Their diplomatic intervention in the Sino-Japanese struggle is designed, in the main, to exploit imperialist antagonisms in the Far East in the interest of furthering their primary European aims. Hitler, too, is maneuvering for recovery of Germany’s former colonial possessions in the Far East, now held by Japan. But not wishing to antagonize Japan, whom he needs as an ally against the U.S.S.R., he refrains from pressing these colonial “claims.” Fascist Italy seeks to play Japan off against Great Britain in the interest of Italy’s Mediterranean ambitions. Germany and Italy together seek to play off Japan against Great Britain and France as a part of their maneuvers for the alignment of camps in the coming world war. Japan, on the other hand, dailies with the Rome-Berlin axis for the purpose of blackmailing Great Britain and France and in order to ensure a front against the USSR in the West.

XXV

The U.S.S.R., as a workers’ state, has no imperialist interests or aims in China. On the contrary, it is in the interests of the U.S.S.R. to help smash imperialism in all its colonial and semi-colonial strongholds by rendering the fullest possible aid to the oppressed peoples in their struggle against imperialism. When Stalinist opportunism brought the great Chinese revolution to ruin in 1927, a mighty bulwark of the U.S.S.R., not only against imperialist Japan, but against the whole world front of imperialism, was destroyed. When Japan subsequently seized Manchuria, Stalin had no alternative but to surrender to Japan the Chinese Eastern Railway, greatest single strategic asset of the U.S.S.R. in the Far East, and to embark on a course of steady retreat before the Japanese imperialists. In Germany, Stalinist policies facilitated Hitler’s triumph and increased the war menace on the Western frontiers of the U.S.S.R. Within the Soviet Union, the system of bureaucratic absolutism engendered a profound crisis, which, threatening the very foundation of the worker’s state, has paralyzed Soviet foreign policy and deprived it of any independent character. Thinking to meet and counter the fascist danger in Europe, Stalin has traded away the independence and revolutionary policies of the Communist parties in exchange for pacts with democratic” bourgeois states. Desiring to pit China against Japan not in the interests of China’s liberation from imperialism, but solely in order to delay the attack of Japanese imperialism on the Soviet Union—he has traded away to the Kuomintang what remained of the Chinese Communist Party and the Peasant Red armies. Soviet policy in China is dictated exclusively by the conservative and reactionary interests of he Soviet bureaucracy, and lacks any principled revolutionary foundation. Having lined up with the Kuomintang and the “democratic” imperialist powers, Stalin does not hesitate to become the accomplice of imperialism against the new beginnings of the Chinese Revolution.

XXVI

It is in the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy that the war between China and Japan should be prolonged, especially in view of the open threat of the Japanese imperialists to attack the U.S.S.R. as soon as their aims in China are realized and the danger that a defeated China may become, even if only passively, an ally of Japan and the European fascist states against the U.S.S.R. For these reasons, after letting tour precious mounts pass by the Stalinist government began extending material aid to China, not on the principle basis of aiding an oppressed country against the imperialist oppressor (such revolutionary motivations long ago ceased to be the guiding star of the Stalin government), but purely as a matter of military-strategic necessity. To hasten the extension of this aid, the Kuomintang government entered into a “non-aggression pact” with Moscow after withholding its signature there for four years. This delay reflected the hope of the Kuomintang that it would he able to arrive at a peaceful agreement with Japan. Soviet material aid to China has been mainly to the Kuomintang and not to the former Red army. The aid commenced, moreover, at a time when capitulatory moods in the party of the Chinese bourgeoisie had already begun to weaken the defensive campaign against Japan. It is precisely the lack of any principled revolutionary basis for Soviet policy which deprives this aid of full effectiveness in China’s struggle. Quantitatively, the aid is seriously limited by the sharp internal crisis which the bureaucracy has brought on by the Soviet Union, by Stalinist dependence on Anglo-French imperialism in all spheres of foreign policy, and by Stalin’s need to avoid any premature military embroilment with Japan.

XXVII

Driven against its inclination into resistance to Japan, the Kuomintang has confined itself to a purely military defensive campaign, which, while proving totally inadequate, has resulted in the wanton sacrifice of living forces. From the very beginning of the struggle, by refusing to abrogate Japan’s imperialist privileges in China, the Kuomintang has kept the door open to negotiations with the enemy. Compelled to restore a certain amount of freedom to the masses, it has at the same time suppressed and driven underground those popular organizations which it was unable to circumscribe and control. The revolutionary vanguard of the Chinese masses, the organization of the Fourth Internationalists, is compelled to live in illegality. All the political opponents of the Kuomintang regime, including heroic battlers for China’s independence, are branded as traitors and treated as such. Afraid to make good the deficiencies of China’s defense by arming the masses and summoning them on the widest scale to participate in the struggle, the Kuomintang makes known its willingness to treat with Japan through the intermediation of “friendly powers”. Unbridled speculation corruption and treachery pervade the circles of the government and reach into the army. The burdens of the war are loaded onto the backs of the masses, while the fortunes of the bourgeoisie are left untouched. In the face of all the crimes of the Kuomintang and the ruling class, the Stalinists, having renounced their political independence and their revolutionary program, maintain a shamefaced silence. Thereby they become party to these crimes and the betrayal which the Kuomintang has been preparing. In the hounding of the Chinese revolutionists, the Stalinists, as in Spain and the Soviet Union, stand in the van of the reaction.

XXVIII

The course of the Sino-Japanese war has demonstrated that a backward, semi-colonial country, with a feeble industry, poor in heavy armament, cannot long prevail in a purely military defensive war against a much more powerful adversary. The technical deficiencies of China’s defense can be made good only by the development of an all sided political campaign, which, combined with military operations, will draw the million headed masses into the struggle, disrupt the forces of the invader, fan the embers of revolution in the enemy country, and inspire the world working class to actions of international solidarity. But the masses can be drawn into the struggle only on the basis of a revolutionary program corresponding to their most urgent needs. The invading forces can be disrupted only by revolutionary appeals. Revolutionary example alone can help stir revolution in the enemy country. Appeals for international working class solidarity can be effective only on a revolutionary basis. Action along these lines cannot be taken by the bourgeois government of the exploiters, which fears the masses and the revolution more than it does the imperialists. That is why, despite the heroic self-sacrifice of the Chinese soldiers, China’s struggle has displayed, in its first stage, under the leadership of the Kuomintang, such pitiful bankruptcy and impotence.

XXIX

The Chinese masses have not yet been able to intervene in the war struggle through their own independent organizations. On the contrary, they have been compelled by all the circumstances to play the role of more or less passive spectators and victims of events. Held prostrate for years under the military dictatorship of the Kuomintang and the economic crisis, the workers finally renewed their activity on the basis of the new conjunctural turn of 1935-36. The war, resulting in the outright physical destruction of much of the important industrial concentration area at Shanghai, and the Japanese military occupation of similar areas in North China, has halted the process of economic recovery and militants against any uninterrupted revival of the workers’ movement. Added to this, the renegacy of the Communist party, crowning development of years of opportunism and adventurism, has deepened the confusion and disorientation of the masses. A new turn of events, enabling a new revolutionary party to take shape on the foundations created by the Bolshevik-Leninists of the Fourth International, will be required before the Chinese masses will be able to take to the revolutionary road.

XXX

Despite the bankruptcy of the Kuomintang regime and the delay in the independent entry of the Chinese masses into the war, the Japanese imperialists will find it impossible to conquer China. Insular Britain, in the heyday of world capitalism, could build an empire of millions of colonial slaves in Africa and Asia, proceeding from a powerful economic base at home. Today, the British imperialists are faced with Empire doom. Insular Japan, in the era of the twilight of capitalism, proceeding from a weak economic base, is debarred historically from achieving the imperial destiny of which her ruling classes dream. Underlying the imposing facade of Japanese imperialism are fatal organic weaknesses which have already been aggravated by the military conquest of Manchuria. The resources of Japanese capitalism have been proved inadequate for the task of empire building. The economic fabric of the country is being strained to breaking point by the new military campaigns. Japanese capitalism survives by means of the intensest exploitation of the Japanese proletariat, while the peasants, forming the major part of Japan’s population, are victims of growing impoverishment and distress. The burdens of both workers and peasants are being increased unbearably by the war. More than 30,000,000 Chinese in Manchuria await the opportunity to liberate themselves from the Japanese yoke. Another 21,000,000 Koreans and 5,000,000 Formosans strive for their independence from Japan. All these factors constitute the Achilles heel of Japanese imperialism and fordoom it to destruction. Such military victories as the Japanese army is able to win in China have only an episodic importance. The first serious reverses, which are inevitable if the war is protracted, will become the starting point of social and political explosions in Japan and in the territories of Manchuria, Korea and Formosa. Regardless of the immediate outcome of the war in China, Japanese imperialism is doomed. The military machine of the Japanese imperialists has never yet been flung against a first class power. Weakened by what will turn out to be Pyrrhic victories in China, Japanese imperialism will go down to defeat in the coming world war if its career is not brought to a speedier end by the proletarian revolution. In the final analysis, the cause of the revolution in the Far East will be advanced to the extent that the masses in both China and Japan, and in the Japanese colonies, are successful in preventing the ruling classes from saddling them with the cost of the present military campaigns.

XXXI

Should Japan’s military victories in the present campaigns cause the downfall of the Kuomintang regime, this will not signify the end of Chinese resistance to Japan, but merely the end of a single phase of the struggle. In the new phase, the pro-Japanese policies of the Kuomintang’s successors, combined with the intolerable oppression of the Japanese imperialists, will inevitably engender even if with some delay a widespread civil war, which, being directed against both the Japanese imperialists and the Chinese bourgeois government, is bound to assume the character of a social revolution. Having discovered in experience the utter bankruptcy and impotence of the Kuomintang, the national bourgeoisie and their Stalinist allies, the Chinese masses will more and more incline to rely on their own organizations and their own arms. They will look to the Bolshevik-Leninists for leadership and rally under the revolutionary standard of the Fourth International. The revolutionary resurgence in China will encourage revival of the liberation movements in Manchuria, Korea and Formosa. Social tension in Japan will be sharpened to the point of revolution. The reciprocal inter-relationship of these developments will furnish the objective premises for the proletarian and national revolution in China, and the proletarian revolution in Japan. It is the task of revolutionists to prepare for these events. In China, in particular, the Bolshevik Leninists must participate bravely in the anti Japanese struggle and raise thereby slogans corresponding to the needs of the struggle and the interests of the masses at each new stage. By these means they will win the confidence of the masses and be able to mobilize them in their own independent organizations for revolutionary action.

XXXII

The perspectives outlined above obligate the workers in all countries, and especially the revolutionary vanguard, to support China’s struggle against Japan by all possible means. The defeat of Japanese imperialism will not only open roads to the revolution in China and Japan, but will encourage fresh waves of revolt in all the colonies of the imperialist powers. It will, moreover, remove a grave menace to the Soviet Union and stimulate the Soviet proletariat to struggle against the counter-revolutionary Stalin regime. Revolutionary support for China’s struggle does not, however, mean that revolutionists must furnish cover for the bankrupt Kuomintang regime and the Chinese bourgeoisie. Nor does it mean calling upon the “democratic” imperialist governments to intervene against Japan and save China, or support of these governments if and when they do intervene against Japan. This is the line of the Stalinist traitors. The imperialists of the West will intervene against Japan only to preserve their own robber interests in the Far East. If Japanese imperialism should be defeated in China by its imperialist rivals, and not by the revolutionary masses, this would signify the enslavement of China by Anglo American capital. China’s national liberation, and the emancipation of the Chinese masses from all exploitation, can be achieved only by the Chinese masses themselves, in alliance with the proletariat and oppressed peoples of all the world. The international revolutionary campaign for aid to China must proceed under the banner of workers’ sanctions against Japan and find its full expression in the promotion of the class struggle and the proletarian revolution.

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From The Labor History Archives -In The 80^th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis And Toledo General Strikes- A Lesson In The History Of Class Struggle   

 

 

COMMUNISTS AND THE GENERAL STRIKE

By Leon Trotsky

The signal for a review of the international tasks of Communism was given by the March 1921 events in Germany. You will recall what happened. There were calls for a general strike, there were sacrifices by the workers, there was a cruel massacre of the Communist Par­ty, internally there were disagreements on the part of some, and ut­ter treachery on the part of others. But the Comintern said firmly: In Germany the March policy of the Communist Party was a mistake. Why? Because the German Party reckoned that it was directly con­fronted with the task of conquering power. It turned out that the task confronting the party was that of conquering not power, but the working class. What nurtured the psychology of the German Communist Party in 1921 that drove it into the March action? It was nurtured by the circumstances and the moods which crystallis­ed in Europe after the war.

In 1919 the German working class engaged in a number of cruel and bloody battles, the same thing happened in 1920, and during the January and March days of 1920 the German working class became convinced that heroism alone, that readiness to venture and to die, was not enough; that somehow the working class was lack­ing something. It began to take a more watchful and expectant at­titude towards events and facts. It had banked in its time upon the old Social Democracy to secure the socialist overturn.

The Social Democracy dragged the proletariat into the war. When the thunders of the November 1918 revolution rolled, the old Social Democracy begins to talk the language of social revolution and even proclaimed, as you recall, the German republic to be a socialist republic. The proletariat took this seriously, and kept pressing for­ward. Colliding with the bourgeois gangs it suffered crushing defeats once, twice and a third time. Naturally this does not mean that its hatred of the bourgeosie or its readiness to struggle had lessened, but its brains had meanwhile acquired many new convolutions of caution and watchfulness. For new battles it already wants to have guarantees of victory.

And this mood began to grow increasingly stronger among the European working class in 1920-22 after the experiences of the in­itial assault, after the initial semi-victories and minor conquests and the subsequent major defeats. At that moment, in the days when the European working class began after the war to understand clearly, or at least to sense that the business of conquering state power is a very complicated business and that bare hands cannot cope with the bourgeoisie—at that moment the most dynamic section of the working class formed itself into the Communist Party.

But this Communist Party still felt as if it were a shell shot out of a cannon. It appeared on the scene and it seemed to it that it need­ed only shout its battle-cry, dash forward and the working class would rush out to follow. It turned out otherwise. It turned out that the working class had, upon suffering a series of disillusions con­cerning its primitive revolutionary illusions, assumed a watch-and-wait attitude by the time the Communist Party took shape in 1920 (and especially in 1921) and rushed forward. The working class was not accustomed to this party, it had not seen the party in action. Since the working class had been deceived more than once in the past, it has every reason to demand that the party win its confidence, or, to put it differently, the party must still discharge its obligation of demonstrating to the working class that it should follow and is justified in following the party into the fires of battle, when the party issues the summons. During the March days of 1921 in Germany we saw a Communist Party—devoted, revolutionary, ready for struggle—rushing forward, but not followed by the working class. Perhaps one-quarter or one-fifth of the German working class did follow. Because of its revolutionary impatience this most revolu­tionary section came into collision with the other four-fifths; and already tried, so to speak, mechanically and here and there by force to draw them into the struggle, which is of course completely out of the question.

In general, comrades, the International is a wonderful institution. And the training one party gives to another is likewise irreplaceable. But generally speaking, one must say that each working class tends to repeat all the mistakes at the expense of its own back and bones. The International can be of assistance only in the sense of seeing to it that this back receives the minimum number of scars, but in the nature of things scars are unavoidable.

We saw this almost the other day in France. In the port of Havre there occurred a strike of 15,000 workers. This strike of local im­portance attracted the nation-wide attention of the working class by its stubbornness, firmness and discipline. It led to rather large con­tributions for the benefit of the strikers through our party's central organ, L 'Humanite: there were agitational tours, and so on. The French government through its police-chief brought the strike to a bloody clash in which three workers were killed. (It is quite possible that this happened through some assistance by anarchist elements inside the French working class who time and again involuntarily abet reaction.) These killings were of course bound to produce great repercussions among the French working class.

You will recall that the March 1921 events in Germany also started when in Central Germany the chief of police, a Social Democrat, sent military-police gangs to crush the strikers. This fact was at the bottom of our German party's call for a general strike. In France we observe an analogous course of events: a stubborn strike, which catches the interest of the entire working class, followed by bloody clashes. Three strikers are killed. The murders occurred, say, on Fri­day and by Saturday there already convened a conference of the so-called unitarian unions, i.e., the revolutionary trade unions, which maintain close relations with the Communist Party; and at this con­ference it is decided to call the working class to a general strike on the next day. But no general strike came out of it. In Germany dur­ing the (so-called) general strike in March there participated one-quarter, one-fifth or one-sixth of the working class. In France even a smaller fraction of the French proletariat participated in the general strike. If one follows the French press to see how this whole affair was carried out, then, comrades, one has to scratch one's head ten times in recognising how young and inexperienced are the Communist parties of Western Europe. The Comintern had accused the French Communists of passivity. This was correct. And the German Com­munist Party, too, had been accused prior to March of passivity.

Demanded of the party was activity, initiative, aggressive agita­tion, intervention into the day-to-day struggles of the working class. But the party attempted in March to recoup its yesterday's passivity by the heroic action of a general strike, almost an uprising. On a lesser scale, this was repeated the other day in France. In order to emerge from passivity they proclaimed a general strike for a work­ing class which was just beginning to emerge from passivity under the conditions of an incipient revival and improvement in the con­juncture. How did they motivate this? They motivated it by this, that the news of the murder of the three workers had produced a shocking impression on the party's Central Committee and on the Confederation of Labour. How could it have failed to produce such an impression? Of course, it was shocking! And so the slogan of the general strike was raised. If the Communist Party were so strong as to need only issue a call for a general strike then everything would be fine. But a general strike is a component and a dynamic part of the proletarian revolution itself.

Out of the general strike there arise clashes with the troops and the question is posed of who is master in the country. Who controls the army—the bourgeoisie or the proletariat? It is possible to speak of a protest general strike, but this is a question of utmost impor­tance. When a dispatch comes over the wires that three workers have been killed at Havre and when it is known that there is no revolu­tion in France but, instead, a stagnant situation, that the working class is just beginning to stir slightly out of a condition of passivity engendered by events during the war and post-war period—in such a situation to launch the slogan for a general strike is to commit the geatest and crudest blunder which can only undermine for a long time, for many months to come, the confidence of the working masses in a party which behaves in such a manner.

True enough, the direct responsibility in this case was not borne by the party; the slogan was issued by the so-called unitarian, that is, revolutionary trade unions. But in reality what should the party and the trade unions have done? They should have mobilised every party and trade union worker who was qualified and sent them out to read this news from one end of the country to the other. The first thing was to tell the story as it should have been told. We have a daily paper, L'ffumanite, our central organ. It has a circulation of approximately 200,000—a rather large circulation, but France has a population of not less than 40 million. In the provinces there is virtually no circulation of the daily newspaper, consequently, the task was to inform the workers, to tell them the story agitationally, and to touch them to the quick with this story. The -second thing needed was to turn to the Socialist Party, the party of Longuet and Renaudel with a few questions—no occasion could have been more propitious—and say: "In Havre three worker strikers have been kill­ed; we take it for granted that this cannot be permitted to go un­punished. We are prepared to employ the most resolute measures. We ask, what do you propose?"

The very posing of these questions would have attracted a great attention. It was necessary to turn to Jouhaux's reformist trade unions which are much closer to the strikers. Jouhaux feigned sym­pathy for this strike and gave it material aid. It was necessary to put to him the following question: "You of the reformist trade unions, what do you propose? We, the Communist Party, propose to hold tomorrow not a general strike but a conference of the Com­munist Party, of the unitarian revolutionary trade unions and of the reformist trade unions in order to discuss how this aggression of capitalism ought to be answered."

It was necessary to swing the working masses into motion. Perhaps a general strike might have come into it. I do not know; maybe a protest strike, maybe not. In any case it was far too little simply to announce, to cry out that my indignation had been aroused, when I learned over the wires that three workers had been killed. It was instead necessary to touch to the quick the hearts of the working masses. After such an activity the whole working class might not perhaps have gone out on a demonstrative strike but we could, of course, have reached a very considerable section. However, instead there was a mistake, let me repeat, on a smaller scale than the March events. It was a mistake on a two by four scale. With this difference that in France there were no assaults, no sweeping actions, no new bloody clashes, but simply a failure; the general strike was a fiasco and by this token—a minus on the Communist Party's card, not a plus but a minus.

(From the Report on the Fifth Anniversary of the October Revolu­tion and the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International. Moscow, October 20th 1922)
*******

The Minneapolis Teamsters strike, 1934 - Jeremy Brecher

Jeremy Brecher's short history of the militant and successful strike of truck drivers in Minneapolis in 1934, in which strikers beat police off the streets.

During the great depression in Minneapolis there developed a conflict which clearly demonstrated the process of polarization of social classes occurring throughout the country. Early in 1934, Teamsters1 who worked in Minneapolis coalyards struck, caught the employers by surprise, and closed down sixty-five of the town's sixty-seven coal yards; the employers capitulated in three days and granted recognition for Teamsters Local 574. The local held a catch-all charter making it virtually industrial in character, and truckdrivers and helpers in all trades began pouring in. Unofficial leadership for the unions was given by the Dunne brothers and Karl Skogeland, who were American followers of Leon Trotsky. When the truckers2 refused to sign any agreement with the union, the Teamsters voted at a mass meeting May 12th to strike. Most businesses were hit by the strike - general and department stores, groceries, bakeries, cleaners and laundries, meat and provision houses, all building materials; all wholesale houses, all factories; gas and oil companies, stations and attendants; breweries, truck transfer and warehouses; all common carriers. As the Sheriff later put it, "They had the town tied up tight. Not a truck could move in Minneapolis." The only exceptions were the unionized milk, ice and coal companies, which were given strike exemptions.3
The key tactic of the strike was the "flying squadron," a system of mobile pickets operating out of the strike headquarters, an old garage rented for the strike. There were never less than 500 strikers at the headquarters, day or night. In the dispatchers' room four telephones took in messages from picket captains throughout the city with instructions to call in every ten minutes.

Truck attempting to move load of produce from Berman Fruit, under police convoy. Have only ten pickets, send help. Successfully turned back five trucks entering city. . . . Am returning Cars 42 and 46 to headquarters.4

On the basis of such information, the dispatchers sent cars from the garage wherever they were needed. A motorcycle squad cruised the city reporting trouble. The strikers listened to police radio instructions on a special short-wave radio, and conducted phone calls in code when their phones were tapped. Pickets guarded fifty roads into the city, turning back non-union trucks. A crew of 120 prepared food day and night; at the peak of the strike, 10,000 people ate at the headquarters in a single day. A hospital was established with two doctors and three nurses in constant attendance.
And a machine shop with fifteen auto mechanics kept the 100 trucks and cars of the flying squadrons in repair. Guards policed the headquarters and watchmen with tommy guns stood guard on the roof. Constant P A announcements and nightly mass meetings attended by thousands of strikers and supporters kept strikers in touch.5 A rank-and-file committee of 100 truckdrivers formed the official strike authority.
Support for the strike among other Minneapolis workers was passionate. Thirty-five thousand building trades workers walked out in sympathy, as did an the taxi drivers in the city. The Farm Holiday Association, a militant farmers' organization, made substantial contributions of food, and other unions contributed to the strike fund. Hundreds of non-Teamster workers showed up at strike headquarters daily saying, "Use us, this is our strike."6
The city polarized as the business forces, too, began to organize. Leading them was the Citizens' Alliance, one of the most powerful employers' associations in the country, with its own corps of undercover informers. It was dedicated to keeping unionism out of Minneapolis and for a generation it had been almost completely successful. Business leaders developed their own strike headquarters with barracks, hospital and commissary. As the conflict deepened they called for a "mass movement of citizens" to break the strike and began organizing a "citizen's army,"7 Many of whose members were deputized as special police.8 With an unusual clarity, two organized social classes stood face to face, poised for battle.
The battle was seriously joined on Monday, May 21st. A group of men and women pickets had been severely beaten when they were sent into a police trap by a stool pigeon who had infiltrated the strike headquarters. One striker described the effect thus:

Nobody had carried any weapon or club in the first days of the strike. We went unarmed but we'd learned our lesson. All over headquarters you'd see guys making saps or sawing off lead pipe. . .9

As the citizens' army began to occupy the market and move trucks, the strikers hit with military precision. A strike leader described it':

We built up our reserves in this way. At short time intervals during an entire day we sent fifteen or twenty pickets pulled in from all over the city into the Central Labor Union headquarters on Eighth Street. So that although nobody knew it, we had a detachment of six hundred men there, each armed with clubs, by Monday morning. Another nine hundred or so we held in reserve at strike headquarters. In the market itself, pickets without union buttons were placed in key positions. There remained scattered through the city, at their regular posts, only a skeleton picket line.
The men in the market were in constant communication through motorcycles and telephone with headquarters. The special deputies [citizens' army] were gradually pushed by our pickets to one side and isolated from the cops. When that was accomplished the signal was given and the six hundred men poured out of Central Labor Union headquarters. They marched in military formation, four abreast, each with their clubs, to the market. They kept on coming. When the socialites, the Alfred Lindleys and the rest who had expected a little picnic with a mad rabble, saw this bunch, they began to get some idea what the score was. Then we called on the pickets from strike headquarters who marched into the center of the market and encircled the police. They [the police] were put right in the center with no way out. At intervals we made sallies on them to separate a few. This kept up for a couple of hours, till finally they drew their guns. We had anticipated this would happen, and that then the pickets would be . unable to fight them. You can't lick a gun with a club. The correlation of forces becomes a little unbalanced. So we picked out a striker, a big man and utterly fearless, and sent him in a truck with twenty-five pickets. He was instructed to drive right into the formation of cops and stop for nothing. We knew he'd do it. Down the street he came like a bat out of hell, with his horn honking and into the market arena. The cops held up their hands for him to stop, but he kept on; they gave way and he was in the middle of them. The pickets jumped out on the cops. We figured by intermixing with the cops in hand-to-hand fighting, they would not use their guns because they would have to shoot cops as well as strikers. Cops don't like to do that.
Casualties for the day included for the strikers a broken collar bone, the cut-open skull of a picket who swung on a cop and hit a striker by mistake as the cop dodged, and a couple of broken ribs. On the other side, roughly thirty cops were taken to the hospital.10

The Monday battle was not decisive, however, and the reserves on both sides mobilized in the market again the next day. An extra 500 special police were sworn in, and according to Charles R. Walker's study of the strike, An American City, "Nearly every worker who could afford to be away from his job that day, and some who couldn't, planned to be on hand in the market."11 Twenty to thirty thousand people showed up. No battle was planned; the melee began when a merchant started to move crates of tomatoes and a picket threw them through his store window. The pickets, armed with lead pipes and clubs, fought viciously with the police, driving them out of the market within an hour, then continuing to battle them all over the city. By nightfall there were no police to be seen in Minneapolis. Strikers were directing downtown traffic.
After the "Battle of Deputies Run," a settlement of sorts was patched together by the Governor and Federal mediators, leaving the real issues unsettled, and events moved toward a second strike.
The Chief of Police requested a virtual doubling of his budget to add 400 men to the force, to maintain a training school, and to buy machine guns, rifles and bayonets, steel helmets, riot clubs and motorcycles. The employers sponsored an enormous press and radio campaign against the union, stressing an attack by the head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters calling the local leadership Communistic. The workers laid in food for a forty-day seige.
On July 5th the largest mass meeting in the history of Minneapolis, preceded by a march of farmer and labor groups with two airplanes flying overhead, mobilized support for the Teamsters and displayed the forces that would support them in the event of another showdown. When the Teamsters struck again on July 16th, they re-established in still more perfected form the strike organization, published a hugely popular strike daily paper (circulation went from nothing to 10,000 in two days), and kept farmer support by allowing all members of farmers' organizations to drive their trucks into town and establish their own market.
The first few days of the strike were peaceful, then the police tried to break it by terror. On July 20th, a truck accompanied by fifty police armed with shotguns started moving in the market. A second truck with ten pickets arrived and cut across the convoy's path. The police opened fire, and within ten minutes sixty-seven persons, including thirteen bystanders, were wounded, two fatally. A commission appointed by the Governor to investigate the "riot" later concluded:

Police took direct aim at the pickets and fired to kill. Physical safety of police was at no time endangered. . . . At no time did pickets attack the police. . . .
The truck movement in question was not a serious attempt to move merchandise, but a "plant" arranged by the police.
The police department did not act as an impartial police force to enforce law and order, but rather became an agency to break the strike. Police actions have been to discredit the strike and the Truck Drivers' Union so that public sentiment would be against the strikers.12

These actions were hardly accidental. As the secretary of the Citizens Alliance, whose leaders met with the Police Chief just before the attack, stated later,

Nobody likes to see bloodshed, but I tell you after the police had used their guns on July 20 we felt that the strike was breaking. . . . There are very few men who will stand up in a strike when there is a question of they themselves getting killed.13

That night an enormous protest meeting ended in a march on City Hall to lynch the Mayor and Police Chief. The march was headed off by National Guard troops. This, together with a huge mass funeral for one of the killed pickets - attended by an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 - revealed that whatever its intentions, the massacre had strengthened rather than undermined the workers' determination and solidarity.
In this situation Farmer-Labor Governor Floyd B. Olson - who had personally contributed $500 to the strike fund and declared, “I am not a liberal. . . I am a radical" - declared martial law. The Governor's official policy was that neither pickets nor trucks (except those delivering food) would operate; but by the second day of martial law, military authorities announced that "more than half the trucks in Hennepin County were operating."14 Faced with the imminent breaking of the strike, the workers decided at a mass meeting attended by 25,000 to resume picketing in defiance of the Governor and the National Guard. The Governor replied by surrounding the strike headquarters at 4 a.m., August 1st, occupying it, arresting most of the top strike leaders, and instructing the rank and file to elect new leaders. The strikers replied with intensified picketing. As the press reported:

Marauding bands of pickets roamed the streets of Minneapolis today in automobiles and trucks, striking at commercial truck movement in widespread sections of the city. . . . National Guardsmen in squad cars made frantic efforts to clamp down. The continued picketing was regarded as a protest over the military arrest of Brown and the Dunnes, strike leaders, together with 68 others during and after Guardsmen raided strike headquarters and the Central Labor Union.15

Charles Walker wrote, "The strike's conduct had been such that a thousand lesser leaders had come out of the ranks and the pickets themselves by this time had learned their own jobs. The arrest of the leaders, instead of beheading the movement, infused it, at least temporarily, with demoniac fury."16 As one worker said, "We established 'curb headquarters' all over the city. We had twenty of them."17
In the face of this situation, the Governor was forced to back down. He released the captured leaders, turned back the strike headquarters, and raided the Citizens Alliance to save face with his labor constituents. The strike continued and with the city reeling after a month of conflict the employers succumbed to the enormous pressures for a settlement and capitulated. The strike supporters celebrated with a twelve-hour binge.
Excepted and very slightly edited from Strike! - Jeremy Brecher.

• 1. libcom note: delivery drivers union members
• 2. libcom note: "truckers" in this instance seems to be referring to the trucking companies as opposed to the workers themselves.
• 3. Charles R. Walker, American City, A Rank-and-File History (N.Y.: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937), pp. 97-8.
• 4. Ibid., pp. 99-100.
• 5. Ibid., pp. 102-3.
• 6. Ibid., pp. 110-1.
• 7. Ibid., p. 109.
• 8. Ibid., p. 110.
• 9. Ibid., p. 111.
• 10. Ibid., pp. 113-4.
• 11. Ibid., p. 120.
• 12. Cited Ibid., pp. 168-9.
• 13. Cited Ibid., pp. 171-2.
• 14. Ibid., p. 181.
• 15. Ibid., pp. 208-9.
• 16. Ibid., p. 211.
• 17. Ibid., p. 208.

Posted By

Steven.
Sep 3 2013 11:52

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• Jeremy Brecher
• Teamsters
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• USA
• 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike
• Great Depression
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• One day in July: Remembering the 1934 Minneapolis Teamster strike
• 1934: Minneapolis Teamsters strike
• Chapter 5: Depression Decade
• Reactions of the American proletariat during the 1929 crisis
• The Teamsters wildcat strike, 1970- Jeremy Brecher

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***On The 50^th Anniversary Of The Voting Rights Act-Blowing In The Wind - With Bob Dylan And The Generation Of ‘68 In Mind-Take Three

From The Pen Of  Frank Jackman

Scene: Girls’ Lounge, North Clintondale High School, Monday morning before school, late September, 1962. Additional information for those who know not of girls lounges, for whatever reason. (And not necessarily just guys who might wonder why they needed the extra space, silly guys, but girls from high schools who did not pamper their older girls and who had to put up with broken mirrors, cramped toilets and nowhere to dispose of their “friend.”) The North Clintondale High School girls’ lounge was reserved strictly for junior and senior girls, no sophomore girls and, most decidedly, no freshmen girls need come within twenty feet of the place for any reason, particularly by accident, under penalty of tumult. It was placed there for the “elect” to use before school, during lunch, after school, and during the day if the need arose for bathroom breaks, but that last was well down on the prerogatives list since any girl could use any other “lav” in the school. No queen, no lioness ever guarded her territory as fiercely as the junior and senior girls of any year, not just 1962, guarded the aura of their lounge. (In the age of co-ed college dorms, unisex bathrooms, and baby changing areas in both men’s and women’s bathrooms this may seem rather quaint and worse rather condescending but that was the ethos of the time, the time just before the great women’s liberation break-out that some of those same young women who guarded the lounge like that previously mentioned queen or lioness would participate.)

Needless to say the place was strictly off-limits to boys, although there had been recent talk, 1962 talk, if talk it was, about some girls thinking, or maybe better, wishing, that boys could enter that hallowed ground, after school enter. Unlike the cigarette smoking rumor this one while persistent never seemed to have gone anywhere. Moreover after school most junior or senior girls were either working part-time jobs at local slave labor department stores or restaurants, heading home to help mother take of younger children (and getting a heads up on what their future might look like), playing lady-like intramural sports far away from boy eyes (in those awful bloomers they wore while playing restricted no-contact basketball or swatting volleyballs ), or, most likely already with some boy in his latest homemade automobile (homemade after hours spent in the garage working out the kinks to made the damn thing go faster, but don’t tell the parents that, the parents of the girl) after a quick run over to North Adamsville Beach. Still that boy rumor possibility was much more likely than entry by those forlorn sophomore and freshman girls, lost or not.

Now the reasoning behind this special girls’ lounge, at least according to Clintondale public school authority wisdom established so far back no one remembered who started it, although a good guess was sometime in the Jazz Age, the time of the “lost generation,” was that junior and senior girls needed some space to attend to their toilet and to adjust to the other rigors of the girl school day and, apparently, that fact was not true for the younger girls. So for that “as far back as can be remembered” junior and senior girls have been using the lounge for their physical, spiritual, demonic, and other intrigue needs.

Certainly it was not the décor that they were fierce about. Now the physical set- up of the place, by 1962 anyway, was that of a rather run-down throne-ante room. Your standard school, heck, for that matter any public building Ladies’ restroom (remember as well this was situated in a public school so erase any thoughts of some elegant woman’s lounge in some fancy downtown Clintondale hotel, some Ritz-ish place); stalls, three, three sinks complete with oversized mirrors for proper preening, several paper towel dispensers and a couple of throw away waste paper baskets (and of course a place to dispense with those monthly napkins) all set off in bland public building colors.

Beyond that though was the lounge area maybe twice the size of the bathroom area which this year as almost any of the previous ten years contained two old time sofas, a couple of easy chairs, three end tables filled with magazines, mainly girl fashion-related magazines from various years and a couple more waste paper baskets. On one long green wall photographs of previous years of junior and senior girls who were privileged to sit in this very area. On the other providing some fresh air in season three very large glass windows with latch opening for ease of use. (Those windows rumored but only rumored to allow an errant young woman or seven to puff cigarettes and blow the smoke out into the airs. If the school authorities ever discovered that such practices went on, or if they did, did anything about it is unclear however those rumors persisted until long after 1962.)       

The “charm” of the place was thus in its exclusivity not its appearance. Come Monday morning, any school day Monday morning, the ones that counted after hard social weekend of fending, or not fending, off some sidewalk Lothario, and the place was sure to be jam-packed with every girl with a story to tell, re-tell, or discount as the case may be. If this had been a Catholic school rather than public it would have required the full-time services of a senior cleric to absolve all the lies told on any given Monday morning. Also needless to say, and it took no modern sociologist, no sociologist of youth culture, post-World War II youth culture, no one studied in the tribal norms, in the angsts and alienation, to figure it out in even such an elitist democratic lounge which apparently took it model from ancient Greek civic life except ruled by young women rather than old men that a certain pecking order, or more aptly cliques existed aplenty.

The most vocal one, although the smallest, was composed of the “bad” girls, mainly working class, or lower, mostly Irish and Italian, fathers working in the local shipyard or the factories that dotted the river, cigarette-smoking (allegedly okay), blowing the smoke out the window this September day as the weather was still good enough to have open windows. As if the nervous, quick-puff stale smells of the cigarettes were not permanently etched on the stained walls already, taking no bloodhound to figure out the No Smoking rule was being violated, violated daily. (Again no action by school authorities was ever taken while a junior or senior girl was in this sanctuary.) Oh yes, and those “bad” girls just then were chewing gum, chewing Wrigley’s double-mint gum, although that ubiquitous habit was not confined to bad girls, as if that act would take the smell of the cigarette away from their breathes. One girl, Anna, a usually dour pretty girl, was animatedly talking, without a seeming hint of embarrassment or concern that others would hear about how her new boyfriend, a biker from Adamsville who to hear her tell it was an A- Number One stud, and she “did it” on the Adamsville beach (she put it more graphically, much more graphically, but the reader can figure that out). And her listeners, previously somewhat sullen, perked up as she went into the details, and they started, Monday morning or not, to get a certain glean in their eyes thinking about the response when they told their own boyfriends about this one. If they did.

Less vocal, but certainly not more careful in their weekend doings talk, were the, for lack of a better term, the pom-pom girls, the school social leaders, the ones who planned the school dances and such, and put the events together in order to, no, not to show their superior organizing skills for future resumes as one might think, but to lure boys, the jock and social boys, into their own Adamsville beach traps. And not, like Anna and her biker, on any smelly, sandy, clamshell-filled, stone-wretched beach, blanket-less for chrissakes. Leave that for the “bad” girls. They, to a girl, were comfortably snuggled up, according to their whispered stories, in the back seat of a boss ’57 Chevy or other prestige car, with their honeys and putting it more gingerly than Anna (and less graphically) “doing it.”

And, lastly, was the group around Peggy Kelly, not that she was the leader of this group for it had no leader, or any particular organized form either, but because when we get out of the smoke-filled, sex talk-filled, hot-air Monday morning before school North Clintondale junior and senior girls’ lounge we will be following her around. This group, almost all Irish girls, Irish Catholic girls if that additional description is needed, of varying respectabilities, was actually there to attend to their toilet and prepare for the rigors of the girl school day. Oh yes, after all what is the point of being in this exclusive, if democratic, lounge anyway, they too were talking in very, very, very quiet tones discussing their weekend doings, their mainly sexless weekend doings, although at least one, Dora, was speaking just a bit too cryptically, and with just a little too much of a glean in her eyes to pass churchly muster.

And what of Peggy? Well Peggy had her story to tell, if she decided to tell it which she had no intention of doing that day. She was bothered, with an unfocused bother, but no question a bother about other aspects of her life, about what she was going to after high school, about her place in the world than to speak of sex. It was not that Peggy didn’t like sex, or rather more truthfully, the idea of sex, or maybe better put on her less confused days, the idea of the idea of sex. Just this past weekend, Saturday night, although it was a book sealed with seven seals that she was determined not to speak of, girls’ lounge or not, she had let Pete Rizzo “feel her up,” put his hands on her breast. No, not skin on skin, jesus no, but through her buttoned-up blouse. And she liked it. And moreover, she thought that night, that tossing and turning night, “when she was ready” she was would be no prude about it. When she was ready, and that is why she insisted that the idea of the idea of sex was something that would fall into place. When she was ready.

But as she listened to the other Irish girls and their half-lies about their weekends, or drifted off into her own thoughts sex, good idea or not, was not high on her list of activities just then. Certainly not with Pete. Pete was a boy that she had met when she was walking at “the meadows,” For those not familiar with the Clintondale meadows this was a well-manicured and preserved former pasture area that the town fathers had designated as park, replete with picnic tables, outdoor barbecue pits, a small playground area and a small restroom (a facility that made the girls’ lounge at Clintondale High look like one in a downtown hotel by comparison). The idea was to preserve a little of old-time farm country Clintondale in the face of all the building going on in town. But for Peggy the best part was that on any given day no one was using the space, preferring the more gaudy, raucous and, well, fun-filled Gloversville Amusement Park, a couple of towns over. So she could roam there freely, and that seemed be Pete’s idea, as well one day. And that meeting really set up what was bothering Peggy these days.

Pete was a freshman at the small local Gloversville College. Although it was small and had been, according to Pete, one of those colleges founded by religious dissidents, Protestant religious dissidents from the mainstream Protestantism of their day, it was well-regarded academically (also courtesy of Pete). And that was Pete’s attraction for Peggy, his ideas and how he expressed them. They fit right in with what Peggy had been bothered by for a while. Things that could not be spoken of in girls’ lounge, or maybe even thought of there. Things like what to do about the black civil rights struggle that was burning up the television every night. About the awful way that whites treated the blacks down there (and the way that her father, a full-blooded Irishman who had grown up in South Boston and who could find no better word for the blacks than n----r and there were plenty in all-white Clintondale who used that same word without a second thought). Pete was “heading south” next summer he said. (That term of youthful political art signifying that he would be taking a bus, or maybe as part of a carload, and head for hellish Alabama or goddam Mississippi to aid the besieged black civil-rights fighters in one of the programs drawn up by one of the increasingly active Northern campus activist coalitions.) They also as youth will talked of things like were we going to last until next week if the Russians came at us, or we went after the Russians. And behind that threat the big one, the big red scare Cold War nuclear holocaust threat that was unspoken but which she had serious dreams about, and dreams about joining with others to stop the damn madness. 

Also mingled in aside from that that not then pressing sex question, for she was a young woman of her time and upbringing as well, though why was she worried every day about her appearance and why she, like an addiction, always, always, made her way to the girls’ lounge to “make her face” as part of the rigors of the girl school day. And if not pressing then sneaking in every once in a while whole sex thing that was coming, and she was glad of it, just not with Pete, Pete who after all was just too serious, too much like those commissars over in Russia, although she liked the way he placed his hands on her. And she was still thinking hard on these subjects as she excused herself from the group as she put the final touches of lipstick on. Just then the bell rang for first period, and she was off into the girl day.

Scene: Boys’ “Lav,” Second Floor, Clintondale High School, Monday morning before school, September, 1962. (Not necessarily the same Monday morning as the scene above but some Monday after the first Monday, Labor Day, in September. In any case even if it was the same Monday as the one above that coincidence does not drive this story, other more ethereal factors do.) Additional information for those who know not of boys’ lavs, for whatever reason. The Clintondale High School boys’ rest rooms, unlike the girls’ lounge mentioned above at North, where that old time rule applied to the girls’ lounge, was open to any boy in need of its facilities, even lowly, pimply freshmen as long as they could take the gaffe. Apparently Clintondale high school boys, unlike the upperclassmen girls needed no special consideration for their grooming needs in order to face the schoolboy day.

Well, strictly speaking that statement about a truly democratic boys’ lav universe was not true. The first floor boys’ lav down by the woodworking shop was most strictly off limits, and had been as far back as anyone could remember, maybe Neanderthal times, to any but biker boys, badass corner boys, guys with big chips on their shoulders and the wherewithal to keep them there , and assorted other toughs. No geeks, dweebs, nerds, guys in plaid shirts and loafers with or without pennies inserted in them, or wannabe toughs, wannabe toughs who did not have that wherewithal to maintain that chip status need apply. And none did, none at least since legendary corner boy king (Benny’s Variety Store version), “Slash” Larkin, threw some misdirected freshman through a work-working shop window for his mistake. Ever since every boy in the school, every non-biker, non-corner boy, or non-tough had not gone within fifty yards of that lav, even if they took shop classes in the area. And a “comic” aspect of every year’s freshman orientation was a guided finger to point out which lav NOT to use, and that window where that freshman learned the error of his ways. No king, no lion ever guarded his territory as fiercely as the “bad” boys did. Except, maybe, those junior and senior Clintondale girls of any year, and not just 1962, as they guarded their lounge lair.

That left the boys’ rooms on the second floor, the third floor, the one as you entered the gymnasium, and the one outside of the cafeteria for every other boy’s use. A description, a short description, of these lavs is in order. One description fits all will suffice; a small room, with stalls, sinks, mirrors, etc. the same as found in any rest room in any public building in the country. Additionally, naturally, several somewhat grimy, stained (from the “misses”) urinals. What draws our attention to the second floor boys’ room this day are two facts. First, this rest room is in the back of the floor away from snooping teachers’ eyes, ears and noses and has been known, again for an indeterminate time, as the place where guys could cadge a smoke, a few quick puffs anyway, on a cigarette and blow the smoke out the back window, rain or shine, cold or hot weather. So any guy of any class who needed his “fix” found his way there. And secondly, today, as he had done almost every Monday before school since freshman year John Prescott and friends have held forth there to speak solemnly of the weekend’s doing, or not doings. To speak of sex, non-sex, and more often than seemed possible, of the girl who got away, damn it.

Of course, egalitarian democratic or not, even such drab places as schoolboy rest rooms have their pecking orders, and the second floor back tended to eliminate non-smoking underclassmen, non-smokers in general, serious intellectual types, non-jocks, non-social butterflies, and non-plaid shirt and loafer boys. And Johnny Prescott, if nothing else was the epitome of the plaid shirt and loafer crowd. And just like at that up-scale North Clintondale girls’ lounge come Monday morning, any school day Monday morning, the ones that count, and the place was sure to be jam-packed with every plaid-shirted, penny-loafered boy with a story to tell, re-tell, or discount as the case may be. Also needless to say, and it took no modern sociologist, no sociologist of youth culture, post-World War II youth culture, to figure it out in even such a smoky democratic setting there was a certain standardized routine-ness to these Monday mornings. And that routine-ness, the very fact of it, is why John Prescott draws our attention on this day.

And if Johnny was the king of his clique for no other reason than he was smart, but not too smart, not intellectual smart, or showing it any way, that he was first to wear plaid and loafers and not be laughed at, and he had no trouble dating girls, many notched girls, which was the real sign of distinction in second floor lav, he was nevertheless a troubled plaid-ist.

No, not big troubled, but, no question, troubled. Troubled about this sex thing, and about having to have the notches to prove it, whether, to keep up appearances, you had to lie about it or not when you struck out as happened to Johnny more times than he let on (and as he found out later happened to more guys more often than not). Troubled about political stuff like what was going on down in the South with those black kids taking an awful beating every day as he saw on television every freaking night. (And like Peggy’s father his father casting aspersions down on the “nigras” the only term he knew, or cared to know coming for backwater Kentucky and not fully aware that a civil war had been fought to decide that question of black equality). And right next store in Adamsville where some kids, admittedly some intellectual goof kids, were picketing Woolworth’s every Saturday to let black people, not in Adamsville because there were no blacks in Adamsville, or Clintondale for that matter, but down in Georgia, eat a cheese sandwich in peace at a lunch counter and he thought he should do something about that too, except those intellectual goofs might goof on him, might wonder about his motives since he made it his business to goof on them at school. But, damn, those kids down south had right to eat that freaking cheese sandwich in peace, although the Woolworth’s cheese sandwiches even grilled were awful to eat.

And big, big issues like whether we were going to live out our lives as anything but mutants on this planet what with the Russian threatening us everywhere with big bombs, and big communist one-size-fits- all ideas. Worst, though were the dizzying thoughts of his place in the sun and how big it would be. Worse, right now worse though was to finish this third morning cigarette and tell his girl, his third new girl in two months, Julie James, that he needed some time this weekend to just go off by himself, to go “the meadows” maybe, and think about the stuff he had on his mind.

*******

Scene: Clintondale Meadows, one late September 1962 Saturday afternoon. The features of the place already described above, including its underutilization. Enter Johnny Prescott from the north, plaid shirt, brown loafers, no pennies on this pair, black un-cuffed chinos, and against the winds of late September this year his Clintondale High white and blue sports jacket won for his athletic prowess as a basketball player in sophomore year. Theodore White’s The Making Of A President-1960 in hand. Enter from the south Peggy Kelly radiant in her cashmere sweater, her just so full skirt, and her black patent leather shoes with her additional against the chill winds red and black North Clintondale varsity club supporter sweater. James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain in hand. Johnny spied Peggy first, makes an initial approach as he did to most every girl every chance he got, but noticed, noticed at a time when such things were important in Clintondale teen high school life the telltale red and black sweater, and immediately backed off. You see never the twain shall meet as far as those two cross-town rivals went, starting with the bitter football rivalry between the two schools like they were Cold War opponents. There was an unwritten law, not easily transgressed then that one did not speak to, much less date, a member of the opposing school. (And enough stories about the “shunning” of such dalliances existed so that at least publicly it was not done. Later times would find that such laws were breeched as much as honored). Peggy noticing Johnny’s reaction puts her head down. A chance encounter goes for not.

*******

That is not the end of the story though. Johnny and Peggy will “meet” again, by chance, in the Port Authority Bus Station in New York City in the early summer of 1964 as they, along with other recent high school graduates and current college students- “head south.”